


a bird in your teeth

by somethingradiates



Series: Hurt Less [2]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hockey, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Panic Attacks, Past Bucky Barnes/Brock Rumlow, Past Frank Castle/Billy Russo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27092869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingradiates/pseuds/somethingradiates
Summary: Frank knows this game, only it’s not a game.  It’s just Bucky trying to find any reason that seems halfass logical to leave before Frank can figure it out and kick him out himself.“I want you to leave if you want to leave,” Frank told him, early on, maybe the second or third time Bucky slept in his bed.  He had reached over to put his hand under Bucky’s chin, tilt his face up so he was looking in Frank’s eyes.His eyes are so fucking blue, Frank remembers thinking.  “Okay?  It’s up to you.  All this is up to you, Buck.”--or: part two of bucky being traded from the dc hydras to the new york avengers, and all the baggage that accompanies it.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Frank Castle
Series: Hurt Less [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977388
Comments: 27
Kudos: 239





	a bird in your teeth

**Author's Note:**

> well! here i am in the mcu fandom. i somehow managed to sweet-talk the genuinely incredible [thepartyresponsible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible) into reading my nonsense, which promptly became a series!

They don’t talk about it. Not really. 

They don’t talk about it because it happens less and less as time goes on; the longer Bucky’s an Avenger, the more he seems to steady out, bit by bit, inch by inch. He looks Wade Wilson in the eye three months in and Frank almost smiles. Wilson does, beams big and stupid and so bright it almost overshadows the scars. 

But it happens, even if it happens less. “I don’t sleep much,” Frank says, by way of explanation, when Bucky interrupts himself in one of his whirlpools of apology, when he cuts himself off in the middle of _Steve needs to sleep,_ turns it into “Steve needs to - fuck, _you_ need to sleep, I’m sorry,” and Bucky just blinks at him but doesn’t seem like he wants to push it. And it’s true, anyway. Frank gets good at angling his book towards the streetlight coming through the window; Bucky doesn’t sleep for shit when the lamp gets left on. 

Frank knows this game, only it’s not a game. It’s just Bucky trying to find any reason that seems halfass logical to leave before Frank can figure it out and kick him out himself. 

“I want you to leave if you want to leave,” Frank told him, early on, maybe the second or third time Bucky slept in his bed. He had reached over to put his hand under Bucky’s chin, tilt his face up so he was looking in Frank’s eyes. _His eyes are so fucking blue_ , Frank remembers thinking. “Okay? It’s up to you. All this is up to you, Buck.” 

“Okay,” Bucky had said, just barely above a whisper, but he’d stayed.

* * *

It’s not much of a secret, and nobody’s said anything, but it must be enough of a secret that nobody’s said anything to Steve, because he hasn’t knocked Frank’s hotel room door off its hinges. 

Then again, Frank’s pretty sure nobody wants to be the one that drops that news in Steve’s lap, a cat with a disemboweled bird: _here, Cap, your best friend’s fucking a defenseman again, hope you like it._

He’s not sure how much the rest of them know. Frank knows about Bucky and Rumlow because word gets around certain circles in the league - at least, if those circles are men that fuck other men, specifically players that fuck other players. Even if Frank hasn’t so much as been on a date since things ended with Billy, he still gets looped in by Quill, who seems to consider himself the Hermes of the NHL, fluttering from team to team with gossip and body count updates. 

He’d told Quill to shut the fuck up, which, in hindsight, hadn’t done wonders for his reputation as sour and short-tempered, but - fuck. Bucky didn’t need that, to jump into a new team where they knew whose dick he’d been sucking before he even knew all their names. Some teams were like that, but the Avengers has never been, and Frank doesn’t want it to start now. 

They knew enough about Bucky when he came in, anyway. He’s a hell of a forward, a nightmare to play against. He’s Steve’s best friend. He’s quiet, everywhere, on the ice or in post-game interviews or in public. Some of the rookies think he’s spooky, dead-eyed, too intense. 

Frank knows enough former Hydras to know it’s a fucking meat grinder of a team, snatches up talented rookies and promises them the moon and spits them back out when they’re finished busting them to pieces, wringing out everything they can until they don’t need them anymore. He figures Bucky can be forgiven for being a little head-shy for a while.

* * *

They’re in DC, and it’s a nightmare from the minute they get on the bus. 

Frank sits by himself, because he always does; he’s too big for anybody that he’d willingly share with to sit next to him comfortably, and he’s unceremoniously and wordlessly shoved one of the little ones, squirrelly and loud, out of their seat too many times for them to fuck with him anymore. Bucky sits with Steve, which is a little bit of a breach of protocol, but they’re talking with their heads together, quiet and intense, almost the whole way down. 

Bucky’s quiet at dinner, but he sits next to Frank, between him and Barton, who seems to be making it his mission, alongside Lang, to make Bucky laugh. It works a couple of times, and if they can tell Bucky’s heart isn’t in it, they don’t let it show. They’re good kids, Frank thinks, a little gratefully. 

“You can just,” he says later, on the way up to their rooms, and finds himself a little lost for words when Bucky looks at him. “Uh. You can just stay with me. If you want. I know it’s - ” 

He clears his throat, rubs the back of his head. Bucky follows the motion. Bucky follows where people’s hands are, most of the time. “It’s hard,” Frank says finally. “I get it.” 

Frank doesn’t think Bucky knows about him and Billy. Steve’s the only person that would probably say anything to him, and Steve’s not much of a gossip, and anyway, Steve had probably willfully forgotten about it as soon as Frank told him, because Steve’s got all the tolerance of a matronly maiden aunt when it comes to discussing his team’s romantic entanglements. It doesn’t really make sense, otherwise, because Frank’s an Avenger, has always been an Avenger. 

Bucky’s quiet long enough that Frank thinks he’ll refuse, but what he gets instead is thoughtful, trepidatious silence. _I don’t want anything,_ Frank wants to say, just to break it, and doesn’t. _This isn’t a trade._

“Okay,” Bucky says, and then, quietly, “thanks.” 

“You don’t need to thank me, Buck,” Frank says, maybe more gently than he means to. Bucky doesn’t say anything to that, but Frank gets the first real smile he’s seen out of him all day, so he’ll take it.

* * *

At first, Frank’s not sure what he’s hearing. It takes too long to figure out that it’s just breathing, uneven and shallow, and at first, there’s just a hot, sick swoop of embarrassment, the realization crashing over him that he’s hearing something he’s not meant to. 

Fuck, he thinks, stares at the ceiling, Bucky would never make a move in real life, and this isn’t Bucky making a move _now_ , it’s just - fuck. Good for him. Frank’s going for a walk. 

He moves quietly, always has, and he knows he can get out of the room without waking Bucky up, but when he’s crossing the room to the door - maybe the light changes a little, but that’s not it, there’s barely any light at all - Bucky flinches in his sleep so hard it looks like a myoclonic jerk, and grits out, quiet, “Don’t.” 

Frank stills right where he is, doesn’t even breath. For a minute, he’s not sure if Bucky’s talking to him. Bucky shifts, restless and tense; he’s still asleep, eyes wrenched shut. 

“Don’t,” he says again, mumbles it, and if Frank weren’t listening so close he might have missed it. “I’m sorry, _don’t_.” 

“Hey,” Frank says, sleep-hoarse, and crosses over to the bed. It occurs to him that Bucky might not respond well to being startled in a dark bedroom, that he might get punched in the jaw for his trouble. It occurs to him, immediately after, that he’ll risk it. “Buck, hey.” 

Bucky shifts away from him. He’s shivering. “Stop it,” he says, still in that same little barely-there mumble, “I’m sorry, just stop - ”

Frank sits at the edge of the bed, puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, shakes him a little, gently at first and then a little firmer. Bucky’s sweating and cold, shivering in his thin t-shirt. He must have kicked the blankets off a while ago. “Bucky,” Frank says, keeps his voice soft, but loud enough for Bucky to hear, maybe loud enough to get through to him. “Bucky, hey - ” 

Bucky moves away, then towards him, breath catching loud in his throat. 

“Brock?” 

His voice wavers, and there’s an awful note of what might be hope and might be fear that feels like it drops from Frank’s ears to his throat to his chest and burns the whole way down, digs itself in and clings. 

“No,” he says, keeps his voice steady, but has to clear his throat to do it. “No, Buck, it’s Frank.” 

Bucky’s eyes open, then, and a millisecond later, he’s scrambling to sit up, blinking wide-eyed in the dark. There are tears in his eyes. Frank’s pretty sure he should look away, but Bucky’s still shivering, backed up against the headboard, and he says, instead of any of the other hundred more reasonable things he probably should, _Bucky, c’mere._

And Bucky does. It takes him a second, and Frank almost takes it back, tells him he doesn’t have to, because Bucky reads a suggestion or a request like a demand and the last thing he needs right now is somebody telling him what to do with himself - 

“Fuck,” Bucky says, shudders it out against his skin. Frank sinks into the bed a little more, moves back from where he’d been perched at the edge, and Bucky moves closer, face buried in his shoulder. “Fuck, Frank, Jesus, I’m sorry - ” 

“You’re alright,” Frank interrupts. His hand is moving up and down Bucky’s back like a metronome, steady and slow and even, and it’s easier to focus on that than the pinprick-heat where Bucky’s catching his breath against him. “You’re alright, Bucky, we’re in DC in my hotel room, nobody’s here but you and me. You’re okay. Okay?” 

Bucky’s quiet for a long minute, just breathing. “Okay,” he whispers. He’s got a hand clenched tight in Frank’s t-shirt, balled up in a fist, and all the muscles in his neck and arms are shaking like he just staggered out of a ten-mile run. 

Frank thinks about how he was going to leave, walk around the hotel a few times. Thinks about leaving Bucky like this, shivering and scared in somebody else’s bed, about Bucky begging somebody to stop, about the way his voice shook when he said _Brock_ like he didn’t know whose hands were on him.

* * *

It gets ugly fast. 

Rumlow shadows Bucky, sure, tails him from one end of the ice to the other, gets a little too close to him a few times, but not enough for anybody to find suspicious. He never touches him; Rumlow’s a jackal, likes to play with his food for a while before there’s any kind of killing bite. It makes sense to fuck with Bucky a little. There’s bad blood. 

Frank wouldn’t do it. None of the Avengers would. But there’s a reason Rumlow has fans, and it’s because of shit like this. 

They’re up one with two minutes left in the first, and Bucky hasn’t had the puck for probably fifteen seconds when Rumlow checks him so hard against the boards that the glass fucking ripples. Bucky’s on his feet almost immediately; his helmet went skittering across the ice and he’s wide-eyed and pale, staring after Rumlow, dark hair plastered with sweat against his forehead. He doesn’t look scared. He doesn’t look like anything. 

It’s autopilot. Frank would do the same thing for any of them. 

He gets his right hand on Rumlow’s shoulder to spin him around, tugging the glove off his left hand with his teeth while he does it. Rumlow grins and spreads his arms, drops his gloves - he’d started taking them off as soon as he felt Frank’s hand - and maybe he thinks this’ll be a show, because his grin disappears when Frank’s fist slams into his cheek, right under the eye. 

_You are like,_ Drax told him conversationally, a few days after the Titans traded him over, _being hit with fucking hammer. Understand? Is make sense? Is good, Castle._ He’d fought Drax a few times, mostly for the sake of fighting somebody nicknamed ‘the Destroyer’, and he’d always figured Drax was fucking with him, saying something like that, but Rumlow spins halfway around and catches himself on the board, cold fury in his face, blood running down one side from a split on his high, arrogant cheekbone. 

It’s a good fight. It’s been a long time since Frank’s fought like this. He doesn’t fight like he means it, because fighting like he means it is a good way to flush his contract down the drain; he holds himself back, always, because it’s never personal, none of this shit. 

Rumlow goes for the mouth, first, smashes Frank’s lips against his teeth, and he seems to think that’ll be the end of it, but Rumlow’s always been cocky and spends too much time running and not enough time fighting - or, Frank thinks, his version of fighting might just be hitting people that don’t swing back. _Frank,_ somebody yells behind him, and it sounds a little like T’Challa, but he’s not listening, too focused on the blood rushing in his ears and the blood dripping down from his split eyebrow, the way Rumlow keeps grinning mockingly at him. 

Rumlow looks over his shoulder. 

_Frank,_ somebody else says, and this time, Frank hears it, and this time, it’s Bucky. 

Rumlow grins, opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but he never gets the chance. He hits the ice, one hand at his jaw, skates scrabbling under him, and then they’re mobbed, refs pushing them away, apart from each other. 

Frank’s not proud of it, and he’ll argue with Steve, later, insist that he didn’t realize Rumlow’s hand was flat on the ice in front of his skate, that it isn’t his goddamn fault if Rumlow was too stupid to pull his hand in. The video won’t show anything egregious. Frank’s not fucking stupid. 

Over the screams and jeers of the crowd, Frank hears bone crunch and then, immediately, a choked shout, feels a ref shoving him back by the shoulder, away from Rumlow. Bucky’s watching with the rest of them, but he’s looking at Frank, not Rumlow. 

Frank spits blood and grins. Bucky doesn’t look away.


End file.
